Scribner Seminar Program
2005-2006 Titles
Emerging Diseases: Global challenges to human health


Instructor(s): Michael Ennis-McMillan, Anthropology

Description: Recent outbreaks of new and re-emerging diseases, including AIDS, Ebola, tuberculosis, and cholera, have challenged the ways we think about biological and social factors that cause human suffering. In this seminar, students approach disease from several perspectives, integrating public health, environmental studies, and medical anthropology. We aim to understand the global nature of emerging infectious diseases and learn about factors affecting how we recognize, control, prevent, and treat these diseases. Students develop seminar projects that analyze disease outbreaks in various countries: how does the spread of new diseases relate to social inequality? New medical technologies? Drug policies? Global climate change? Studying infectious diseases gives us a powerful example of how methods in medical and social sciences come together in addressing health problems.